Awestruck

I am home from Arisia now, and only just starting to recover from the overwhelmingly emotional experience that the charity raffle was.

I spent more or less my entire con at the raffle table, and I don't mind at all - it was kind of nice to sit and watch the world come to me, and we were positioned so that that's exactly what happened. Our raffle table was right at the foot of the escalators that led to the dealer's room, volunteer area, art show, teen lounge, and con suite, so I think that everyone in the con walked past us at one point or another.

tpau and I set up to start selling raffle tickets around noon on Friday, and for about 3 days straight that's what we did. We sold tickets, and chatted up everyone who walked by. And somehow, our little raffle - my goofy idea that started as a whim a year ago - became something huge. I feel like everyone at the con decided to take part ownership in it, in an awesome way. Not in that they tried to take credit, or take something away from us, but in a way that let everyone be part of something good by joining us.

Dealers saw us, and started running out to ask if they could donate prizes, even before I had the chance to go in and ask. Guests saw us and came hurrying back with autographed copies of their books. The Writer's Workshop decided to use their brainstorming to create another prize. It felt like every time I turned around, there was something new on our table, being added to the list of prizes.

And people bought tickets. And bought tickets. And bought more tickets. We had lines of people waiting to buy, at some points. People bought tickets, called their friends, and then came back for more. And while they were buying tickets they talked to us, and shared their stories about their own histories - fighting cancer, or working in charity, or... just about anything. And then we raffled off our prizes, and got to make people happy by giving them awesome stuff - even if many of them weren't there to hear their name called, there were enough present to make it feel a bit like playing Santa, and the rest were all smiles when they came to pick their prizes up.

I feel more like a part of the Arisia community than I ever have before. I feel exhausted and overwhelmed and a little shell-shocked, but most of all I feel good.

In the end, we sold 5,218 tickets to 376 people - over 10% of the con attendees. And we brought in...

wait for it....

$4000.

In my wildest dreams I imagined MAYBE earning this much. But I acknowledged in my heart of hearts that these were ludicrous, absurd, ridiculous and unrealistic dreams, and that we'd probably honestly make about half that. And here we are. $4000. In 3 days. From a few hundred amazing people.

Special thanks to tpau for being my teammate in all this, to umbran for being my pillar and my support, to jadasc, baron_saturday, dagibbs, and metaphysick, and to Dan-who-is-not-on-LJ for helping set up, tear down, do data entry, make change, tear tickets, write names over and over again, and generally hug me and keep me sane when sometimes things got a little bit overwhelming.

I think I'm going to collapse now. And maybe cry. In a good way....